Georgia O'Keeffe, 1963

Nathan Oliveira

Nathan Oliveira was one of the Bay Areaâ€™s most prominent printmakers and educators. During his three-decade career at Stanford, which began in 1964, the Oakland native taught a generation of artists. Oliveira began printmaking early on, while he was studying at the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in the early 1950s. He was invited to Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1963 and executed this portrait while he was there. Georgia Oâ€™Keeffe had just arrived at the printshop when President Kennedy was assassinated, and after three days in Los Angeles, the distraught artist returned home. At the time of this portrait, Oliveira was making a series of monochromatic prints depicting a head floating in a cloud of deep black. As with these other prints, the profile pose and the landscape suggested in the background recall the work of Odilon Redon, one of several artists to whom the far-reaching Oliveira was indebted.